This should probably say “I survived the Large Hadron Collider courtesy of the time travelling saviours“…
But it’s a cool shirt, and somewhat timely.
Author: Nathan Campbell
Nathan runs St Eutychus. He loves Jesus. His wife. His daughter. His son. His other daughter. His dog. Coffee. And the Internet. He is the pastor of City South Presbyterian Church, a church in Brisbane, a graduate of Queensland Theological College (M. Div) and the Queensland University of Technology (B. Journ). He spent a significant portion of his pre-ministry-as-a-full-time-job life working in Public Relations, and now loves promoting Jesus in Brisbane and online. He can't believe how great it is that people pay him to talk and think about Jesus. If you'd like to support his writing financially you can do that by giving to his church.
How to make your powerpoints less boring
- Don’t use Powerpoint.
- If you must use Powerpoint don’t use dot points.
- If you must use dot points don’t put them all on one slide.
- If you must put them all on one slide – don’t read them verbatim.
Seriously though. Powerpoint slides have been scientifically proven to be better with less information rather than more…
Here’s the test they ran…
Students were randomly assigned to two groups. One group attended a presentation with traditional bullet-point slides (with the occasional diagram) and the second group attended a presentation with what Chris calls “sparse slides”, which contained the same diagrams, but minimized the amount of text, and broke up the information over several different slides. Both presentations were accompanied by the same spoken narrative.
They were tested using multiple choice questions and then short essays – the multiple choice tests showed no major differences between the groups. The essays on the other hand…
“Before marking the short essay answers, Chris worked with two independent people to identify the themes of information in the presentation. They identified around 30 themes by consensus. The short essay answers were then marked by counting how many of those themes the students wrote about.”
Now that you’re convinced on the science here are the tips from the study.
- Limit what you cover in a presentation. Your audience has limited capacity to take it in.
- Design your slides so that they can be processed quickly by the visual cortex, allowing the language areas to focus on what you’re saying. This means using more pictures and as few words as you think you can get away with.
- Only put on your slides things you want the audience to focus on.
- Split information between slides rather than having it all on one slide.
- Show a picture that the audience has difficulty relating to what you’re saying. Either ask them to guess the relationship, or explain the relationship to them.
A beginner’s guide to bad writing
There are millions of tips for good writing online – but what if you want to be the next Dan Brown?
You need bad writing tips – and this website is here to help – replete with sample passages.
Here are my favourite tips – click the link for the posts (including samples)…
- Replace concrete nouns with abstract ones
- Always use a thesaurus
- Describe every character in minute detail, taking no account of narrative pacing
- Use as many adjectives as you can
- Create subplots which bear no relation to the main story
If you invert the tips you also get a pretty good guide to good writing.
Bear fail
I love a good bear mauling story. Like Elisha and the rude youths.
This one is pretty awesome (except for the part where people die – but they were terrorists). A bunch of militants in India were hiding out in a cave.
The militants had made their hideout in a cave which was actually the bear’s den, said police officer Farooq Ahmed.
The dead have been identified as Mohammad Amin alias Qaiser, and Bashir Ahmed alias Saifullah.
News of the attack emerged when their injured comrade went to a nearby village for treatment.
YouTube Tuesday: Catapulted to success
Do it yourself weaponry looks fun, but short of making a few glove guns as a child I haven’t really made anything…
These are inspiring. If you’ve got other DIY weapons YouTube videos (especially explosive ones) post them in the comments…
I found these here – where there are a few more trebuchet videos.
3 counterintuitive tips
I love Lifehacker’s tips. Especially the odd ones that make you wonder how people came up with them.
There are a plethora of odd tips and tricks out there on the Interwebs. Here are three of my favourites.
1. Put your breaking harddrive in the freezer.
“Many hard drive failures are caused by worn parts that no longer align properly, making it impossible to read data from the drive. Lowering the drive’s temperature causes its metal and plastic internals to contract ever so slightly. Taking the drive out of the freezer, and returning it to room temperature can cause those parts to expand again.”
2. Put your broken video card in the oven.
“Solder joints sometimes crack over time, cutting the connections between electronic components and causing hardware failure. Expose those joints to constant heat, in an oven set to 200 to 275 degrees centigrade, and the lead will melt, clearing out any cracks and reconnecting the joints. After the card has seen enough baking, leave it to cool for a few hours, and it should be working once back in a computer.”
3. Put your drenched mobile phone in rice.
“Use a desiccant to wick away any leftover moisture. The most convenient choice is uncooked rice. Just leave the phone (and its disconnected battery) submerged in a bowl of grains overnight. If you’re worried about rice dust getting inside your phone, you can instead use the packets of silica gel that often come stuffed in the pockets of new clothes. But acting fast is far more important than avoiding a little dust, so don’t waste time shopping if you don’t already have a drawer full of silica gel.”
Statistically kissing dating goodbye
Here’s an interesting statistical breakdown of “match percentages” through OKCupid, an online dating service, based on indicated religious affiliation and level of seriousness.
It’s worth a read for no reason other than that it’s kind of interesting. There are a few other factors considered throughout the piece too.
“All OkCupid users create their own matching algorithms, so when we determine who matches who, we’re just crunching the numbers people give us. A match percentage between two people is a condensed, yet statistically valid, expression of how well they might get along.”
“In short, our method is this: we host an ever-changing database of user-submitted questions, covering every imaginable topic, from spirituality to dental hygiene. To build their own match algorithms, our users answer as many questions as they please (the average is about 230). When answering a question, a user also picks her how her ideal match would answer and how important the question is to her. It’s very simple, and it removes all subjectivity on our part. We simply crunch the numbers.”
Here’s a table. The average “match percentage” is 60.2%.
Want a job at Google?
Here’s a list of 140 questions you might face in a job interview at Google.
- “Every man in a village of 100 married couples has cheated on his wife. Every wife in the village instantly knows when a man other than her husband has cheated, but does not know when her own husband has. The village has a law that does not allow for adultery. Any wife who can prove that her husband is unfaithful must kill him that very day. The women of the village would never disobey this law. One day, the queen of the village visits and announces that at least one husband has been unfaithful. What happens?”
- Explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew.
- “How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?”
- “You are given 2 eggs. You have access to a 100-story building. Eggs can be very hard or very fragile means it may break if dropped from the first floor or may not even break if dropped from 100th floor. Both eggs are identical. You need to figure out the highest floor of a 100-story building an egg can be dropped without breaking. The question is how many drops you need to make. You are allowed to break 2 eggs in the process.”
My answer to all of these questions would be “let me google that for you”…
Via CafeDave.
Jobs for the boys
The New York Times has an infographic today exploring the impact of the GFC on different age groups and demographics in America. It’s pretty fascinating. But it probably doesn’t directly translate to employment in Australia.
Men in America are sitting at an unemployment rate of 9.0% across all demographics, while women are at 7.3%.
College graduates fair remarkably better than non-college graduates, and people over 45 report much better employment rates than younger workers.
I assume this looks at people who want to be in work and aren’t though. Which is the traditional measure of unemployment – despite what some stupid government departments might suggest. Yeah, I’m looking straight at the ones who take the total workforce and subtract it from the total population…
If it did I’d be fairing well – as would people like me – with only 3.9% of white, 25 year old (and over) males with university degrees looking for work.
Shirt of the Day: Anatomy of a space invader
We saw yesterday what space invader’s space ships actually look like – it seems they model the ships on the actual aliens. Here’s another shirt.
Qualified advice
I had an idea in the car yesterday. And I’ve started another Tumblr. I’ve called it Qualified Advice.
It’s probably not what you think…
Check it out.
And while you’re at it – check out my Just Google It Tumblr too – here’s a link to a random post.
Joining the blogroll
Convicted as I am by the reminder that links are part of the rules for blogging I thought I should draw your attention to the fact that I have reinstated the blog roll to my front page.
I’d like to update it.
If you comment or read here, and have a blog, let me know. Chances are I already read it. But it’s buried in myriad other blogs in Google Reader. If you let me know, I’ll add you.
I’ve just added Izaac’s wife Sarah – who has started her own blog.
If you have a blogroll, and you’re reading this, and I’m not on it… add me. It’ll make me feel special. And if I get lots of traffic from you I might even mail you a Freddo.
Top Five Rules for blogging: #1 Keep it regular
Yesterday I posted a list of my top five rules for blogging.
Mikey posted a response on Christian Reflections – and a comment – reminding me of the cardinal rule of blogging (that I missed). Link to other people. Regularly. I like that rule. There will now be six posts in this series. Starting with this one…
Rule One – Blog Regularly
If you want your blog to last past the first week you need to have a plan to go past the first week.
Figure out a scope of topics you want to talk about. Come up with a regular feature. Do whatever it takes to have a steady stream of content – but in my experience most would be bloggers start up with big dreams and fall over after the second post.
The best way not to do this is to just post for the sake of posting until you develop a rhythm. Blogging is all about momentum. Momentum doesn’t build itself. The physical definition of the concept is that momentum is mass multiplied by velocity. You can’t generate blogging momentum without content posted regularly.
Readers won’t stick around if you don’t post often. Your friends might. But unless they subscribe straight away they’ll probably forget about you.
You need to be prepared to publish half polished thoughts and let your commenters do some work – if you can get commenters (but that’s rule two). That’s the beauty of the medium. Don’t see blogging as a place to share essays. It can be. But the pressure will kill you and keep you from posting.
Shirt of the Day: New contender for worst hobby ever
Have you heard of geocaching – or perhaps even dabbled in the hobby?
It’s probably slightly lower on the hobby scale than metal detecting… there’s no promise of riches. Just the promise of other people’s trash.
Here’s a shirt that pretty much sums up the issue.
